As Trump Slashes Federal Grants, the Harvard School of Public Health Has the Most To Lose

As President Donald Trump escalates his attacks on universities’ access to federal research funding, the Harvard School of Public Health has felt the pain especially acutely.

HSPH is by far the most reliant of all the University’s schools on sponsored support, with 59 percent of its operating budget coming from the government and private funds. That figure is 22 percentage points higher than the school with the second-highest dependence on federal funding, Harvard Medical School.

Funding cuts have already terminated at least a dozen grants at HSPH and led the school to pause its national search for a dean of research, according to HSPH spokesperson Stephanie Simon.

Simon wrote in a statement that HSPH’s heavy reliance on federal funds has left its research operations “seriously jeopardized.” Research projects have been halted by stop-work orders, and school leaders remain alarmed by a proposal — currently halted by a court — that would cap National Institutes of Health funding for universities’ indirect costs.

“When the grants are terminated, research stops,” Simon wrote. “We are deeply concerned about the impact of these cuts on our work.”

HSPH has already started tightening its belt in response to funding pressures. A “high-level working group” has begun meeting weekly to address budget issues as they arise, and administrators have instructed all departments to limit discretionary spending to essential costs, Simon wrote.

Several of the school’s Ph.D. programs have also shrunk their admissions pools, and the decade-old Harvard Public Health Magazine shuttered its operations late last month.

The school’s funding model, according to HSPH professor John Quackenbush, makes it “nominally a soft money institution” — where many costs such as research expenses and salaries for Ph.D. students are largely grant-funded, rather than covered by institutional sources like endowment income.

“What that means is that anything that threatens grant funding puts us in a particularly precarious or potentially precarious position,” Quackenbush said.

Even with the school’s efforts to shore up its finances, stalled and cancelled grants — and the potential for more to come — have left HSPH professors scrambling to find other ways to fund their work.

HSPH professor Nancy J. Krieger ’80, whose study on methods for measuring exposure to discrimination was terminated, said she was actively searching for new funding sources after being forced to stop drawing funds from her NIH grant.

“It is my personal prerogative to figure out ways to have this research survive without this grant,” Krieger said.

Universities’ funding fears have grown increasingly existential in recent weeks after the Trump administration slashed $400 million from Columbia University’s federal research funding and $175 million from the University of Pennsylvania.

But the cuts at HSPH have come as part of a broader crackdown on grants by the Trump administration. Federal agencies began canceling grants related to DEI in January following an executive order from Trump which required all federally funded educational institutions to terminate “illegal” diversity programs.

Several of the terminated grants at HSPH funded studies on vaccine hesitancy, LGBTQ health, and the impact of racial discrimination on health outcomes.

HSPH Professor Brittany Charlton, who researches how discriminatory laws impact mental health among LGBTQ teenagers, had her entire NIH grant portfolio terminated. Charlton wrote in a statement that she could no longer continue her research or keep the center she founded, the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence, without new sources of funding.

The center has an executive director, three staff members, nine graduate students, and seven postdoctoral fellows, according to its website. The site also lists 14 affiliated faculty members.

Recent studies by researchers at the center have examined low engagement in HIV-related care among Medicare beneficiaries, the rate of workplace harassment experienced by LGBTQ Singaporeans, and differences in cancer rates among lesbian versus heterosexual women.

“This research is vital for assessing the real-world implications of policies that disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community,” Charlton wrote. “Having our NIH funding be terminated is unprecedented and deeply concerning.”

Charlton called on philanthropic foundations and individual donors to fill the growing gaps in HSPH’s budget — allowing the school’s decades-long studies to continue.

“We desperately need foundations and individual philanthropists to continue to help us fund our vital research,” Charlton wrote.

But Krieger and Charlton both said philanthropic funding could never fully replace federal funding.

“Philanthropic organizations, foundations don’t have a responsibility in the same way as the U.S. government for providing research funding to understand the conditions of life in which people live and what that means for their health,” Krieger said.

“Getting NIH funds is crucial,” Krieger added.

Trump’s actions against DEI programs have provoked outrage among many Harvard faculty. Two HMS professors sued the Trump administration on March 12 for taking down their research that mentioned recently banned terms — including “LGBTQ” and “transgender” — from a government website, alleging the removals violated their First Amendment rights.

And on March 3, more than 500 researchers, physicians, and students rallied at Boston Common to protest a host of Trump’s attacks on universities — including his executive orders on DEI programs.

Unlike several of its peer institutions, Harvard has largely stood by its DEI programs even as the Trump administration has railed against diversity initiatives in higher education and pushed some universities to close them down.

Last month, University President Alan M. Garber ’76 voiced support for diversity on campus in his speech at Harvard’s annual Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Forum. And Harvard University Health Services quickly rescheduled a panel on LGBTQ care, after postponing in February in response to executive orders from Trump.

Still, the University has not openly criticized the federal government’s attacks on DEI — and it has not been able to fully shield HSPH research on diversity from the worst of Trump’s onslaught on DEI-related work.

Charlton wrote that the decision to cancel her grants “seems to be based solely on the perceived conflict with the recent executive order related to ‘gender ideology’” and ignores her research’s scientific rigor.

“We’re not trying to advance any radical ideology,” Charlton wrote. “We’re scientists, trying to keep people healthy.”

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.